Lee Ranaldo | Lost Highways

Lee Ranaldo

Lost Highways

New York City, USA: Karma Bookstore/Lazy Eight, 2023

[44] pp., 8 3⁄4 × 7”, staplebound

Edition of 100 [+ 5 AP]

As a touring musician, Lee Ranaldo’s books often take travel as a starting point, from his first title Road Movies to Moroccan Journal (with Leah Singer) to this full colour ‘zine published to coincide with an exhibition at Karma Bookstore in February of last year. The book features quick sketches made from the passenger seat of a tour van, with the road functioning as a "metaphor for a particular psychological state of mind, one that includes the idea of escape and also the freedom of the open road, as representative of endless possibilities – around every bend a new adventure, a new life perhaps." 

Produced in a small edition, the title sold out immediately, as did a 2014 volume of the same name. 

“The[se] drawings [...] were done between 2012 and the present, on travels across Europe, North and South America, Asia, Australia and India. A series done from the passenger seat of a Mercedes Sprinter Van as we traveled on the Autobahn across Germany, and into Denmark. Another created while driving through the Eastern United States in a Ford Econoline, from Connecticut to Virginia, New York City to Ohio. Later series track routes in Nova Scotia, Canada, on the route from Halifax to Cape Breton, through Spanish deserts, along the west coast from Vancouver to San Diego, and in northeast regions of India. The road, like the river, is ever changing and ever the same.”

- Lee Ranaldo